Porous medium permeability estimation for well imagery and characterization using complex resistivity spectra

Resumo

Abstract: Formation permeability plays a crucial role in oil/gas industry as it helps geologists understand how the soil was formed and the most likely location of a certain reservoir. It also aids engineers and analysts to know whether that reservoir is exploitable or not. However, these measurements are very costly and difficult to obtain. In the past decades, several methods have appeared for estimating permeability from different sources like NMR data or well-logs. In this work we tested the relationship between complex impedance spectra and permeability measurements, showing that –for the tested porous medium– it does exist a correlation of almost 98% between the obtained complex electrical impedance spectra and the permeability of those mediums. This link could be used in the oil/gas industry adapting the current electrical imaging tools to perform sweep measurements instead of single-frequency measurements, which could be used, in theory, to obtain permeability measurements with spacial resolution. On the other hand, we also designed and implemented an imaging tool that relies on this principle to obtain complex impedance volume images.